Rush has finally focused on the Kosovo problem

Finally!!! Rush has finally focused on the problems with and in Kosovo. For some of us, we have been screeming about this since April of 1999. Before you decide to jump all over me for any Rush comments, he has almost never spoke about the aftermath in Kosovo. Sure at times he has spoken poorly about the Kosovo operation, but I can't ever recall him saying that we had choosen the wrong side. The question is going to be if he actually goes more in depth or if this is going to be it???

SIRIUS: The Strategic Issues Research Institute
Benjamin C. Works, Director
718 937-2092; www.siri-us.com; E-mail: Benworks@AOL.Com

--Celebrating Chaos Theory Since 1987--

Feb. 9, 1999
Subject: Articles on KLA-Kosovo & Osama bin Laden

NOTE: This archive intended for research use, contains copyrighted material intended "for fair use only."

NOTE: Dragan Ivetic, 3rd-year law student at University of Illinois College of Law, collected and contributed the majority of articles in this file.

Index
1. Jane's Intelligence Review; Feb. 1, 1995; The Balkan Medellin
2. Scotsman, Nov. 30, 1998; US Tackles Islamic Militancy in Kosovo
3. AP Nov. 29, 1998: Report: Bin Laden operated terrorist network based in Albania
4. Balt. Sun; March 6, 1998; KLA Seizes Area near Capital
5. FT Worth Star Telegram; Aug. 25, 1998; Osama: Avoid Civilians
6. Inter Press Service, August 12, 1998, UN Plan for Kosovo Stalled
7. Jerus. Post; Sept. 14, 1998; Kosovo seen as new Islamic bastion
8. AP Nov. 14, 1998; Self-declared Bin Laden aide found guilty in Albania slaying
9. The Times (London), Nov. 29, 1998; Osama-KLA-Albania
10. Sunday Times (London), March 22, 1998; Iran Moves in to Albania
11. Letter: USA Today; Sept. 1998; KLA also uses Terror
12. The Times, Nov 26, 1998; US alarmed as Mujahidin join Kosovo rebels
13. Tanjug; Dec. 16, 1997; Polish Reports of Mujaheddin training in Bosnia

Introduction:
These articles focus on activities in Kosovo and Albania by Osama bin Laden and his crowd of Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists, allying themselves with the KLA --Kosovo Liberation Army-- from the summer of 1998 on.
In February 1998, when the Yugoslav police crackdown on the KLA began, the US State Department recognized the KLS as an international terrorist organization. This means, among other things, that US residents are not allowed to contribute funds, trade weapons or in any way support such organizations. Yet a Washington Post article of May 26, 1998 indicates Washington understands that funds are flowing directly to the KLA. By the summer, the KLA-Osama connection was clearly established, even as the US was bombing Osama's Afghanistan installations with Tomahawks in retribution for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.
The final article, though a Belgrade regurgitation of a Polish article, gives reasonable background on Islamic Fundamentalist activities in Bosnia prior to 1998.
Benjamin C. Works

The Articles:
1. Jane's Intelligence Review
February 1, 1995
SECTION: EUROPE; Vol. 7; No. 2; Pg. 68
The 'Balkan Medellin'
BYLINE: Marko Milivojevic

Introduction
The Albanian-dominated region of western Macedonia accounts for a disproportionate share of the Macedonia's (FYROM) shrinking GDP. This situation has strengthened Albanophobic sentiments among the ethnic Macedonian majority, especially as a great deal of revenue is thought to derive from Albanian narco-terrorism as well as associated gun-running and cross-border smuggling to and from Albania, Bulgaria and the Kosovo province of Serbia. Although its extent and forms remain in dispute, this rising Albanian economic power is helping to turn the Balkans into a hub of criminality.

Albanian Narco-Terrorism
Previously transported to Western Europe through former Yugoslavia, heroin from Turkey, the Transcaucasus and points further east is now being increasingly routed to Italy via the Black Sea, Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia. This is a development that has strengthened the Albanian mafia which is now thought to control 70 per cent of the illegal heroin market in Germany and Switzerland. Closely allied to the powerful Sicilian mafia, the Albanian associates have also greatly benefitted from the presence of large numbers of mainly Kosovar Albanians in a number of West European countries; Switzerland alone now has over 100000 ethnic Albanian residents. As well as providing a perfect cover for Albanian criminals, this diaspora is also a useful source of income for racketeers.
Socially organized in extended families bound together in clan alliances, Kosovar Albanians dominate the Albanian mafia in the southern Balkans. Other than Kosovo, the Albanian mafia is also active in northern Albania and western Macedonia. In this context, the so-called 'Balkan Medellin' is made up of a number of geographically connected border towns, namely Veliki Trnovac and Blastica in Serbia, Vratnica in Macedonia, and Gostivar in Albania. Further afield, the Albanian mafia also has a strong presence in: Pristina, the capital of Kosovo; Skopje, the capital of Macedonia; Shkoder, the second largest city in Albania and its northern provincial capital; and Durres, Albania's main port and maritime link to nearby Italy across the Adriatic Sea.
As for heroin processing locally, the Albanian mafia now reportedly runs at least two secret facilities in Macedonia, which is also the key regional transportation crossroads for the trans-shipment of heroin from Bulgaria to Albania. Heroin shipments are thought to be mostly moved overland by a number of seemingly legitimate international trucking and freight-forwarding companies in Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia.
High-level corruption, widespread local poverty, a tradition of cross-border smuggling and poor policing throughout the region have all aided the recent rise of the Albanian mafia. In Macedonia, local drug-trafficking is now out of control, a fact which no doubt explains why the Macedonian police have recently turned to Italy for assistance in this area of law enforcement. In this context, the Italian national police mounted a major 10-month joint operation with their Macedonian counterparts in Skopje in 1993-94. Codenamed 'Macedonia', this operation reportedly involved intensive surveillance of known Kosovar Albanian drug-traffickers in the Macedonian capital. Here, a joint Italian-Macedonian police swoop resulted in the seizure of 42 kg of pure heroin in May 1994. In terms of the quantity of heroin now routinely transiting Macedonia, however, the Skopje seizure was insignificant. Operationally, larger seizures of such controlled substances are ultimately dependent on co-operation from the police in nearby Serbia and Albania. To date, they have proved remarkably unhelpful.
If left unchecked, this growing Albanian narco-terrorism could lead to a Colombian syndrome in the southern Balkans, or the emergence of a situation in which the Albanian mafia becomes powerful enough to control one or more states in the region. In practical terms, this will involve either Albania or Macedonia, or both. Politically, this is now being done by channelling growing foreign exchange (forex) profits from narco-terrorism into local governments and political parties. In Albania, the ruling Democratic Party (DP) led by President Sali Berisha is now widely suspected of tacitly tolerating and even directly profiting from drug-trafficking for wider politico-economic reasons, namely the financing of secessionist political parties and other groupings in Kosovo and Macedonia.
In Macedonia, the Party for Democratic Prosperity (PDP) and other ethnic Albanian political parties, such as the ultra-nationalistic National Democratic Party (NDP), are almost certainly in receipt of laundered Albanian forex profits from narco-terrorism. These have also been reportedly used for the bribing of corrupt Macedonian government officials and police. More generally, Kosovo and western Macedonia are both suspiciously well endowed in forex. This can only realistically have come from criminal enterprises, given the widespread poverty of these two connected areas in the Yugoslav period.
A similar state of affairs exists in nearby Albania, which is not as poor in forex as its government likes to pretend. In all three cases, this criminally generated forex is often disguised as emigree remittances; these totalled over US$500 million in Albania alone in 1993. If Kosovo and Macedonia are included, then total Albanian forex from narco-terrorism going into the southern Balkans in 1993 could have been as high as US$1 billion. Other than buying the Albanian mafia political protection and influence, and a certain spurious popular legitimacy for its alleged patriotism, this laundered drug money is now being increasingly used in an associated activity, namely gun-running among the region's ethnic Albanians.

Balkan Arms Bazaar
Bizarre even by the murky standards of the Balkans, the recent trial in Skopje of 10 ethnic Albanians charged with 'conspiracy to form military formations' revealed the extent of illegal gun-running at the highest levels in Macedonia. Politically, what made this trial significant was the public standing of some of its defendants. In this context, the then Macedonian interior minister, Ljubomir Frckovski, ordered the arrest in late 1993 of two leading members of the PDP, which was in government in Skopje. The two alleged high-level gun-runners were Midhat Emini, the then president of the PDP, and Husein Haskaj, the then deputy defence minister in the government of Premier Branko Crvenkovski. Given the immense political implications of these arrests and the trial that followed on from them in 1994, Frckovski could only have acted in the way that he did for the most compelling of reasons.
All of this meant that top PDP leaders were then involved in the illegal importation of armaments purchased in Albania, Bulgaria, Serbia and the West. These activities must have involved the local Albanian mafia, which is itself heavily armed with sophisticated weaponry purchased with the profits from narco-terrorism. This may have indicated that the PDP and the NDP were tiring of parliamentary politics in Skopje and preparing other options to advance their cause, namely an armed uprising of some sort. In the case of the main ethnic Albanian political party in Macedonia, the PDP, this interpretation was later given added credence when its formally relatively moderate leadership was ousted by a radical ultra-nationalist faction in a palace revolution orchestrated by the DP government in Albania. Significantly, this development took place just after the public trial of the two top PDP leaders charged with illegal gun-running.
Currently led by two noted ultra-nationalists, Abdurahman Haliti and Medhuh Thaci, the PDP can thus no longer be regarded as a purely constitutional party. In practice, it is also a secret party-militia, tainted with Albanian narco-terrorist connections. This is even more true of the NDP which is now close to becoming a terrorist organization. In addition, both these parties are now also directly controlled by nearby Albania where the SHIK secret police is known to be heavily implicated in both working with the Albanian mafia and cross-border gun-running into Macedonia and Kosovo. For all these reasons, the PDP and the NDP may eventually be formally proscribed by the Skopje government.
Despite its recent poor performance in the October 1994 elections (see article on pp 64-67), the VMRO-DPMNE aims to profit from such worsening inter-ethnic tensions in the future. Already, it is openly advocating the use of repressive and violent options against the ethnic Albanian minority. In this context, the VMRO-DPMNE is itself suspected of secretly arming its ultra-nationalistic membership with the assistance of influential VMRO irredentist forces in nearby Bulgaria. Sofia has a notorious reputation for selling armaments to anybody who can pay for them, including virtually all the parties in the ongoing civil war in the former Yugoslavia.

(there is much more)

(finishing the above article:)

Regional Sanctions Breaking

Effectively trapped between two stronger anti-Macedonian states, namely Serbia and Greece, Macedonia has effectively been compelled to break the trade embargo imposed by the UN against rump Yugoslavia in 1992. In the case of Serbia, Macedonia was closely bound to it economically during the Yugoslav period. Breaking all these economic links, as demanded by the UN Security Council, has proved impossible in practice.

Initially tolerated by the international community, the Macedonian sanctions-breaking has recently reached significant levels, particularly after the UN lifted some of its non-economic sanctions against rump Yugoslavia in 1994. For all practical purposes, there is no longer even the pretence of Macedonian compliance with the UN's sanctions regime against rump Yugoslavia. Other than Greece, Albania and Bulgaria also reportedly make extensive use of Macedonia for their own sanctions-breaking activities in relation to rump Yugoslavia. Economically, it is now an open secret in Skopje that Macedonia would have completely collapsed long ago had it attempted to avoid such regional sanctions-busting.

In this context, matters became critical for Macedonia when Greece, in a move clearly closely co-ordinated with Serbia, imposed an economic blockade against the country in March 1994. This immediately cut off Macedonia from the Greek port of Thessaloniki, thereby increasing its economic dependence on Serbia. The only alternative link to the outside world, via nearby Albania and Bulgaria, was also uncertain. In the case of Albania, this was mainly due to a worsening of relations between Skopje and Tirane over the issue of the ethnic Albanians in western Macedonia.
As regards Bulgaria, there were also political problems, notably those pertaining to Sofia's ambivalent recognition of Macedonia as a separate Macedonian state but not as the homeland of a separate Macedonian nation distinct from Bulgaria. In addition, the main east-west communications routes to Albania and Bulgaria are very poorly developed, thereby limiting the amount of freight traffic they can handle.

Politically, this illegal Greco-Serbian economic pressure against Macedonia has resulted in a more conciliatory stance by the Skopje government towards Athens and Belgrade. Officials in these capitals would like to see Macedonia reincorporated into a third and Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. Domestically, such a scenario is now being made more probable by local socio-economic collapse and the worsening conflict between the ethnic Macedonian majority and the ethnic Albanian minority population in western Macedonia. Longer term, this could conceivably lead to local participation in a proposed regional anti-Albanian and anti-Muslim 'Orthodox Alliance' between Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia and Serbia. Already openly advocated by VMRO-DPMNE, such a scenario would become more probable if Macedonia descends into an inter-ethnic civil war or outright partition furthered by its stronger and hostile neighbours.

Marko Milivojevic is member of the Research Unit in South East European Studies at the University of Bradford, UK.

2. The Scotsman
November 30, 1998, Monday Pg. 7

US TACKLES ISLAMIC MILITANCY IN KOSOVO
Chris Stephen In Pristina

THE United States has asked Kosovo's ethnic Albanian rebels to distance themselves from so called Mujahideen fundamentalists, amid reports that Islamic extremists are arriving to fight in this war-torn province.
KLA leaders have accepted the US request, prompted by fears in Washington that the war in Kosovo will provide fertile ground for Muslim fundamentalists to take root.
Fundamentalists are well established in Albania, despite several raids by the CIA and Albanian security forces that seized five key members of Islamic Jihad and other Middle Eastern groups this summer.

Now a joint CIA-Albanian intelligence operation has reported Mujahideen units from at least half a dozen Middle East countries streaming across the border into Kosovo from safe bases in Albania.

The American request came at an October meeting of US envoys with the leaders of the ethnic-Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army at their headquarters in Geneva.
A senior KLA source told The Scotsman that the group agreed to the request: "It's a clear position; we don't want anything from these people," he said. "Even before they (the US) told us to be careful from them, we'd had this firm understanding."

Approximately a quarter of KLA members are Roman Catholics, and the organisation has insisted throughout this year's fighting that its war with the Serbs, who are Orthodox Christian, is nationalist, and not religious.
But Albanian intelligence services report an influx of Muslim extremists from a variety of countries into Kosovo. "We have information about three or four groups, there are Egyptians, Saudi Arabians, Algerians, Tunisians, Sudanese," said Fatos Klosi, director of the Albanian intelligence service.

The US request was top of a "shopping list" the KLA says the Americans gave it.
As well as refusing offers of help from the Mujahideen, the KLA says it agreed not to use terrorist tactics such as car bombings against the Serbs outside Kosovo.
It also promised not to foment revolt among the ethnic Albanian majority in neighbouring Macedonia.
The KLA is coy about saying what it got in return. So far the answer is very little. The US still says the group cannot be included in peace talks on Kosovo's future until it renounces violence.
But behind the rhetoric, the US is worried that unless it makes concessions, it might drive the rebel movement into the arms of the fundamentalists.

One vital concession to the KLA came earlier this year, when it had the unusual honour of being take off a register of organisations the US defines as "terrorists".
This is a valuable asset, not just in terms of public relations.
It also makes fund-raising among ethnic Albanians abroad much easier.

For the Americans, giving the KLA tacit support is a tightrope.
Shunning it might drive them into the arms of fundamentalists such as Osama Bin Laden -blamed for bombing US embassies in Africa this summer -whose men are already operating in Albania.

But supporting them could give a shot in the arm for the KLA's aim of full independence for Kosovo -something the West fears might fuel uprisings in other parts of the world.

For the moment, the US appears to be leaning on the side of support. Most observers in Kosovo think the current lull in fighting has more to do with winter weather than the ceasefire brokered under threats of NATO action in October.
The majority Albanian population remains committed to independence, and the Serb leadership remains committed to stopping that, with both sides rearming and planning for fighting in the spring.

It is also unclear if the KLA's Geneva leadership really controls all the rebel units on the ground, many of whom follow competing political factions.
How many Islamic volunteers are in Kosovo is equally uncertain. Few have been sighted by the western monitors in the province.
The full strength and political sway of Mujahideen units will only become clear when the spring arrives and warriors again pull the covers from their guns.

4. The Baltimore Sun
March 6, 1998, Friday, FINAL EDITION TELEGRAPH (NEWS), Pg. 20A

Speculation plentiful, facts few about Kosovo separatist group; KLA has already seized region near capital

SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
PRISTINA, Serbia -- The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has claimed responsibility for more than 50 attacks on Serbs and Albanians loyal to the Belgrade government, but little is known about the separatist group.

The KLA made its first public appearance Nov. 28 at a funeral of Albanians killed in action against the Serbian police in the village of Lause. Three masked men brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles swore to throw out the Serbs by force.

Their appearance was a blow to moderate Albanian politicians who had claimed the KLA was run by the Serbian secret service after it first became known a few months earlier.

Details of the KLA, which the United States calls a terrorist organization, are sketchy at best.
Western intelligence sources believe there are no more than several hundred members under arms with military training. Serbian police estimate there are at least 2,000 well-armed men.

The KLA is said to rely heavily on a huge network of informers and sympathizers, enabling it to blend easily among the population.
The Western sources also believe the core of the organization consists of Albanians who fled into exile in the 1970s and based their operation in Switzerland, where its funding is gathered from all over the world.

"If the West wants to nip the KLA in the bud, all it has to do is crack down on its financial nerve center in Switzerland," one source said.
Part of the funding, this source believes, comes from the powerful Albanian mafia organizations that deal in narcotics, prostitution and arms smuggling across Europe.
The KLA has admitted having training bases in northern Albania, which the Albanian government does not condone but is powerless to stop.
The group is believed to have received some of the tens of thousands of weapons looted from army garrisons in Albania last year when the country came close to armed anarchy.
An unspecified number of KLA officers are suspected of having been members of the former Yugoslav People's Army and of having gained combat experience during the war in Bosnia fighting against the Serbs.

The sources say the KLA is well armed with light infantry weapons, but it also has a well-developed signal network enabling it to track police movements and send reinforcements to the right place.

While the KLA certainly enjoys wide support, no one is sure it could mount a concerted military action, or control more territory.

Veton Surroi, editor of the Albanian-language newspaper Koha Ditore, believes it has no central command, but is split into many small units of people simply fed up with Serbian police repression.
"We have kids who possess vintage pistols and call themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army," said Surroi. "The KLA has become a movement of desperate people, rather than a single organized force."

But the rebellion is producing results.
The Serbs already have lost control of at least one region -- 33 towns and villages in the Drenica area west of Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

The Drenica area -- encompassing about 463 square miles, about 10 percent of the province's territory -- has an almost ethnically pure population of roughly 60,000 Albanians, all considered loyal to the KLA.
Western diplomats believe the area always has been the bastion of Albanian separatism, resisting
Belgrade's authority since World War II. The territory was a no-go area even for the purely Albanian police force in the 1970s, when the province enjoyed autonomy in the former Yugoslavia.

Serbian police sources claim to know almost all KLA strongholds but to be waiting for word "from the top" to crack down.
One of the reasons the green light has still not come, Western diplomats believe, is that it would be a messy operation involving politically embarrassing civilian casualties.

7. The Jerusalem Post September 14, 1998, Monday

Kosovo seen as new Islamic bastion
Steve Rodan

BATROVCI, Yugoslavia - The line of cars at this Serbian border town forms early in the morning as travelers head west from the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade toward Croatia and Bosnia. The Yugoslav security officers are thorough, checking each passenger and rummaging through the trunk of every vehicle.

Many of the travelers are Moslems, and the adults wait quietly at the terminal as their children play tag between lines. A few years ago, these people would have been virtually indistinguishable from the thousands of others who crisscross the region.

But today Islamic pride has arrived. Many Moslems have grown beards. Drivers have placed large decals with the Islamic crescent on the back window.
And with money coming from such countries as Iran and Saudi Arabia, being a Moslem means having options.

Diplomats in the region say Bosnia was the first bastion of Islamic power. The autonomous Yugoslav region of Kosovo promises to be the second. During the current rebellion against the Yugoslav army, the ethnic Albanians in the province, most of whom are Moslem, have been provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries.
They are being bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters, or Mujahadeen, who infiltrate from nearby Albania and call themselves the Kosovo Liberation Army.

US defense officials say the support includes that of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi terrorist accused of masterminding the bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
A Defense Department statement on August 20 said Bin Laden's Al Qa'ida organization supports Moslem fighters in both Bosnia and Kosovo.

The growing Islamic fundamentalist presence is an issue rarely voiced in public. The Arab and Islamic world form a huge part of the current and potential market for many of the countries in Central Europe, and highlighting their involvement in the violence in Kosovo is simply bad business.

But the growing support of Iran in Central Europe and the Balkans is regarded as the biggest threat to the region, with the possibility that it can spill over into Western Europe.
"If we isolate the Moslems in Bosnia, then they themselves can be a threat neither to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia nor to the wider region," Yugoslav Defense Minister Pavle Bulatovic said in an interview. "They could be a threat if they gain support from other Moslem national movements or Moslem states."

Yugoslav officials and, privately, many foreign diplomats link the Iranian-backed Bosnian regime to the current rebellion in Kosovo. They say the Iranian success in maintaining a presence and influence in Sarajevo led Teheran to quickly adopt the KLA.

The KLA strength was not the southern Kosovo region, which over the centuries turned from a majority of Serbs to ethnic Albanians. The KLA, however, was strong in neighboring Albania, which today has virtually no central government.

The crisis in Albania led Iran to quickly move in to fill the vacuum. Iranian Revolutionary Guards began to train KLA members. Iranian and Saudi representatives opened foundations to provide patronage. An Islamic bank was launched in the Albanian capital of Tirana. In Skadar, Iranian agents opened the Society of Ayatollah Khomeini.
In the Kosovo town of Prizren, Islamic fundamentalists formed a society funded by the Iranian Culture Center in Belgrade. Selected groups of Albanians were sent to Iran to study that country's version of militant Islam.

So far, Yugoslav officials and Western diplomats agree that millions of dollars have been funnelled through Bosnia and Albania to buy arms for the KLA. The money is raised from both Islamic governments and from Islamic communities in Western Europe, particularly Germany.

Since April, Yugoslav officials say, the KLA has smuggled arms and ammunition in from Albania. They say attempts to smuggle several cannon - meant to launch large- scale strikes against Yugoslav forces - were unsuccessful.
The ramifications of the Iranian campaign has been felt throughout the Middle East. Both Israel and Turkey, for example, have been alarmed by its success in gaining influence in both Bosnia and Albania and have been busy trading intelligence on developments in the region.
"Iran has been active in helping out the Kosovo rebels," Ephraim Kam, deputy director of Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, said. "Iran sees Kosovo and Albania as containing Moslem communities that require help and Teheran is willing to do it."

But much of the training of the KLA remains based in Bosnia. Intelligence sources say mercenaries and volunteers for the separatist movement have been recruited and paid handsome salaries of DM 3,000-DM 5,000 (NIS 6,800-NIS 11,400) a month.
The trainers and fighters in the KLA include many of the Iranians who fought in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Intelligence sources place their number at 7,000, many of whom have married Bosnian women. There are also Afghans, Algerians, Chechens, and Egyptians.

A US congressional analyst said much of the Iranian training and arms smuggling in Bosnia takes place near the contingent of US peacekeeping troops. He said the Clinton administration is fully aware of Iranian activities in Bosnia and Kosovo, but has looked the other way to maintain the 1995 Dayton Accords.
"The administration wants to keep the lid on the pot at all costs," the analyst said. "And if that means that Iran benefits and operates freely in the region, so be it. Needless to say, the Europeans have been quite upset by this."

Still, intelligence sources said, the Iranians have acted cautiously. They say they first arrived in Kosovo early this year and formed a commando unit in May in the town of Donji Perkez. The unit consisted of 120 men divided into seven groups. They included Albanian, Bosnian, Macedonian, and Saudi nationals. The commander was an Egyptian called Abu Ismail, who served in an Iranian Mujahadeen unit in Zenica, Bosnia.
The Iranian fighters were first kept separate from others in the KLA. In late July, the fighters from Macedonia and Saudi Arabia were ordered to withdraw into Albania. The reason was that the sponsors concluded that they were not being used properly. At the Yugoslav and Macedonian border, some of the fighters were captured and interrogated by authorities.

Yugoslav officials and regional diplomats expect to see the Bosnians continue to embrace the Iranians. They see Bosnia, as well as some officials in Croatia, as intending to change the terms of the US-sponsored Dayton Accords that establish the new borders of the former Yugoslavia and maintain an international presence in the region.
The changes being demanded by some key figures in Bosnia include transforming the federation from a multiethnic into an all-Islamic country.

"It was clear to everybody that the implementation of the Dayton and Paris accords would not go smoothly," Bulatovic, the Yugoslav defense minister, said. "Our position is that the Dayton Accords must be implemented as written. If there are renegotiations, it would jeopardize peace and stability in Bosnia."

Yugoslav officials said their crackdown in Kosovo has been successful in stabilizing the province. They said the KLA has drastically reduced its activities and most of its members have fled to Albania.
UN officials said 14,000 residents of Kosovo have crossed into northern Albania, while another 20,000 people driven out of their homes remain in the Serbian province.
The result, the officials said, is that some leaders of the ethnic Albanian community have signalled that they are ready to negotiate an end to the fighting. Kosovo leader Ibrahim Rugova, who last year pledged to reject any solution short of independence, has begun to talk to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. At the same time, KLA political representative Adem Demaqi has warned that a guerrilla war would soon be launched.

The officials expect that US pressure will lead to an agreement to hold elections in Kosovo, establish an autonomous government, and approve a plan to reconsider the issue of independence in another 3-5 years.
They expect the agreement to be accompanied by a lifting of all sanctions against Yugoslavia, which from 1992 has been unable to take a seat in the UN or receive credits from international institutions, such as the World Bank.
At the same time, NATO will play a large role in the area. Members of the alliance are drafting plans to rebuild Albania's 5,000-member military and maintain a large presence in the country.

But the country is regarded as so divided and corrupt that few officials expect any significant amount of money to be given Tirana. A key step is expected to be the parliamentary referendum scheduled in November to approve the country's first post-communist constitution.
Few in the region, however, expect the prospective diplomatic settlement to do better than the Dayton agreement in imposing long-term stability in the region.
Even while some of these diplomats and officials blast Belgrade's crackdown on the Kosovo separatists, they insist that any settlement not include changes in Yugoslavia's current borders or a mere short-term presence of international troops.

"In my view, international support will be long term because the economic, regional, and religious (problems) are so high," Slovenian military chief of staff Brig.-Gen. Iztok Podbregar said. "This is not only the case in Bosnia, but also in Kosovo and Macedonia."

The mass murder at Srebrenica is historic fact. Serb Nazis (and a few demented morons on FR) like to pretend it didn't happen. Unfortunately the stench of the place does not allow me to stay silent in the face of lies.

I will try to address you civilly though you imply that I am a demented moron.

Your use of the word Nazi betrays your bias. The Nazi murdered huge numbers of people (estimated to be 11 million) who never expressed any hostility to Germany or Germans. Claims I have found on websites that believe that a massacre occurred in Srebrenica estimate deaths at 8000 men and boys. I would guess that many of these "men and boys" not only expressed hostility to the Serbs but acted on it.

I don't know what your position is or was, but I would guess that someone "showed you" Srebrenica and they told you what happened there. You did not discover it yourself. It could just be that whoever did the "show and tell," also did some preparation before you showed up. After all, many come back from Cuba praising the glories there, while the locals continue to try to float away in garbage cans.

I guess this not as someone who had a vested interest in what happened in the former Yugoslavia. (Had is the operative word. After 9/11 it became very clear to me that we all had an interest. See e.g. The Moslem Conquest (of India) for a history lesson that shows we should not have needed 9/11 to become interested.) I guess it because almost all to the Kosovo reporting was just so fatuous. I provide here one example from the Washington Post which purports to be a picture of graves where massacre victims were buried which is obviously phony. Because of the Post's copyright dispute with FR I ask you to follow this link for the picture.

Finally I reproduce an article about Kosovo from 1987 which appeared in the New York Times. It talks about the enemy of the Serbs, and right thinking Americans:

The New York Times
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia
Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.
A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.

Vicious Insults
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.
Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.

Radicals' Goals
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance.
The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.

Worst Strife in Years
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name.
The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.''
Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today.
Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.
''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.

Attacks on Slavs
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.
In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.

'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland.
Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''

Concerns Over Military
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service.
Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.
He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.

Region's Slavs Lack Strength
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary, Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr. Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the policy of the hard hand.''
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo ethnic Albanians.
Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian Communist Party.
Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too many ''people without hope.''
But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.
Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to address the country's grave problems.
The hope is that something will be done then to exert the rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into Yugoslavia's mainstream.

Maybe instead of ad hominem you will go back and answer the questions I posed to you in my previous post?

ML/NJ

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.